


Waiting

by doodleishere



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, alternate universe moment, because it is like the MAIN deal with this fic, but I'm tagging it just in case, so like main character death but she's already dead before the fic starts, the major character death is the one that we all already know about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:42:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29733354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doodleishere/pseuds/doodleishere
Summary: A grave, a wish, and a ghost. That's not how it happens, is it?
Relationships: Gideon Nav & Dulcinea Septimus, Gideon Nav & Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon Nav/Dulcinea Septimus, Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> does this fic make any sense?? no. don't go into it thinking it will. it's a mess. enjoy.

**I. SOME TIME BEFORE THE EMPEROR’S BETRAYAL**

Gideon Nav, cavalier to Harrowhark Nonagesimus and sacrificial lamb of the Ninth, has always been an idiot.

Has always been. Always is. Always was. In Harrow’s head, it bleeds together. In the Ninth House, she at least had the courtesy of knowing up from down and right from left and dead from alive; with Ianthe and His Holiness standing on either side of her while they gaze at a grave without a body in it, she is no longer sure of all but two things. The first is that Griddle is not in the ground; the second is that Griddle is not next to her. What else is there to be sure of? What else matters?

“Harrowhark,” God says apologetically and also like he would much rather be saying anything else, “I am truly, deeply sorry. I wish that it did not come to this. I do.”

There is truth behind his words, Harrow thinks. But it is not enough. It never will be.

Harrow thinks she shakes her head. But maybe she doesn’t. She can’t tell. “Gideon Nav is—” A pause, to collect herself—though _collecting_ is probably too strong a word. Her soul has been splintered across the galaxy; her spirit has been hacked into pieces and tossed among the stars. There _is_ no more collecting. There is only making do with the mess left at her feet.

“Gideon Nav,” she starts again, “was an idiot, but she was my cavalier, and she deserved better. She always deserved better. Better than me; better than my parents; better than how the Ninth House ever treated her. We did not deserve her, and I did not deserve her sacrifice. It is a debt that I cannot ever repay and something I will live with for the rest of my life. She is not here anymore, and I am the one to blame for that. I only wish that I could have told her what she meant to me before she threw herself onto a fucking fence.”

“Well put,” says the Necrolord Prime.

“A bit dramatic,” says his Eighth Fingerbone. “But not the worst eulogy I’ve ever heard.” Harrow expects that to be it, but Ianthe the First continues talking. “Do not expect this kind of excitement at your own funeral, Harry; I will not oblige.”

Harrowhark looks down at the tombstone with Griddle’s name scratched into it—the best they could do under the circumstances and ten times better than what she would have received in the Ninth—and something feels like it snaps inside of her chest.

One flesh, one end. And it wasn’t even Harrow’s.

The laugh that sounds off behind her is not God’s or Ianthe’s, but it might as well be for the pain it elicits in the back of her skull. She decides in the second before her body freezes that she will not turn around to look at her cavalier’s ghost. There are things that Harrowhark will do, and there are things that she will not, and bringing attention to the fact that she is seeing a Griddle where there is none falls into the second category. She will not do it. She will retain one last shred of her dignity.

There is a rustle behind her, a feeling of a cool breeze touching her back through her robes, and then Gideon’s voice is saying into her hair, “ _Sugarlips, you need to chill out._ ” Harrow clenches her fist—then she squeezes her eyes shut when she hears Gideon begin to move around her. (Things Harrowhark will not do, specifically: turn to face her dead cavalier. Grace her dead cavalier’s ghost with a gaze when it tries to move into her vision. No. Absolutely not.) There are hands on her cheeks, she thinks, but they’re frozen, and that can’t be right. Her cavalier places something on the edge of Harrowhark’s nose; without looking, she knows that it is those repulsive shades.

“Oh, Harry,” says Ianthe, “crying again?”

She ignores her. She tries to ignore it when her dead cavalier plants a gentle kiss to her temple, but there are only so many things that Harrowhark can take, and the capacity has gone down exponentially since she was forced to watch Gideon impale herself on spikes.

What that boils down to is: there are things that Harrowhark will do, and there are things that she will not, and looking at her dead cavalier’s ghost falls into the first category.

She keeps her breathing even—a habit born from lying about the Ninth _to_ the Ninth; her parents have given her a lot of practice—as she moves her hand up to Gideon’s face, and she tries not to pay attention to it when the Body moves her own hands away from Harrowhark's face and wraps her arms around Gideon’s waist and whispers, “We’re waiting.”

Ianthe moves into the spot where Gideon stood; Gideon vanishes like smoke, along with the Body behind her. Harrow considers all the ways in which she could kill her fellow Lyctor. She’d make it hurt, she thinks.

“Would you like me to clasp your hand, darling?” Ianthe sneers, and she curls her good fingers around Harrow’s; Harrow imagines twisting her phalanges into dust, or maybe growing new skeletons out of them while they rest under Ianthe’s skin. She imagines splitting Ianthe’s skull open and stomping on the meat that plops out. She imagines a lot of things, actually. “Would you like us to reminisce in the breeze? Twirl about in our robes?”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Harrow hisses, and then she turns herself back to God’s shuttle and runs.

**II. A NUMBER OF MONTHS LATER**

Somewhere, in a hidden corner of the planet where Canaan House sits, Harrow knows that there is a grave without a body in it.

She does not know why it matters. She does not know why it makes her nose bleed when she thinks about it. She does not know why the Body tells her, “We’re waiting” every time she considers visiting it.

Her cavalier is dead, and she has eaten **him** up.

 **Ortus** is dead, and she is not even a full Lyctor.

She looks up at the Body who is standing in her doorway. If Harrow didn’t know any better, she would think that she was shaking her head. “We’re waiting,” the Body says before she walks away from Harrowhark. Harrow listens for the sound of footsteps that do not come.

“Waiting for what?” Harrow asks the empty air. But it does not answer.

**III. SOME TIME AGO? A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF TIME BEFORE?**

“Gideon Nav, you are a complete idiot.”

By way of daily introductions, Harrow could have, honestly, done worse. She _had_ done worse—some days, she’d woken up with _Ortus_ standing at attention beside her bed, and any day begun with Ortus at the hip was not a day worth anything.

She’d certainly done worse to Gideon, surely, than telling her like it was. Griddle’s idiocy was simply a fact of life, one that Harrowhark had learned to get used to. (Facts that Harrow had _not_ gotten used to: Gideon Nav is her cavalier, Gideon Nav can be _obedient_ , and Gideon Nav looks remarkable in Emperor-sanctioned navy blue tank tops.)

“I mean, yeah,” says her cavalier, shooting what she probably thinks is a winning smile Harrow’s way. Without her permission, Harrow’s eyes ignore the smile and instead shift slightly lower to watch Griddle’s shoulders move as she goes to stretch. Also without her permission, her brain notes that Griddle’s shoulders are positively _made_ for this whole hand-to-hand combat business. No wonder she wins every match against the other cavaliers; those shoulders could break ribcages if she sighed a little too hard. For some reason, Harrow forgets to breathe. Her cavalier continues despite. “Why right now, specifically?”

The breath comes back to Harrow in a fierce rush. Angry and quick. “Because you are _cavorting_ with _Dulcinea Septimus_.” Harrow makes sure to shape the other woman’s name into bad sounds with her mouth. Dulcinea with emphasis on the _dull_ and the _sin_ and the _ugh_. Septimus with emphasis on the _Septimus_.

Gideon Nav—emphasis on the _Griddle_ and on the _bane of Harrow’s existence_ —smiles wider at the mention of her…friend. Lover. (Gag.) Person With Whom She Spends Her Time Instead Of Spending It With Harrow And No That Doesn’t Make Harrow Jealous Why Do You Ask. Any mention of her tends to turn Gideon’s face into a beaming mess. Harrow does not enjoy it. “I don’t think cavorting is the right word here, boss.” And then Gideon has the fucking _nerve_ to _wink_ when she says, “More like kissing out of house and home.”

Harrow feels her cheeks flush and pretends that it’s from the heat, that she is currently not in, because she is inside and not outside, where the heat is. She is warm from the heat that she is not standing in. Yes, that is it. “Well, stop it,” she manages to push through her teeth. “Stop—doing that.”

Gideon moves from her spot by the window and stands in front of Harrowhark, and Harrowhark genuinely considers turning her cavalier’s bones into dust right there while they are still inside of her. It wouldn’t hurt, she thinks. She’d make it painless. Saw off Gideon’s pain receptors in the second before she disappeared the bones in her body. She’d start at the shoulders.

Gideon places her hands (large and calloused; Harrow likes the roughness of them, she thinks, but _since when_?) on Harrow’s exposed arms, and Harrow runs through all the ways in which she could kill her. Burst her cervical vertebrae and send the pieces into her brain. Snap every rib in half and shoot them careening into her lungs.

“I will do a lot of things for you, bone mistress,” Griddle whispers into the suddenly _not enough_ space between them. Any air that Harrow breathes is air that Gideon breathes, too. _Shit_ , Harrow thinks. “But you’ll have to kill me if you want me to stop dating Dulcie.”

 _Dulcie_. Gross. Like they’re eight years old and Gideon’s got a new friend that she wants to show off to make Harrow jealous, and she’s emphasizing how _special_ she is because _she_ has a nickname that Gideon came up with all by herself. Harrow half-expects to look down and see a friendship bracelet around Gideon’s wrist that spells out F U C K B U D S in black and white beads.

And then—and she swears she’s telling the truth, she’d swear it on the Emperor Himself, she’d swear it on the Body, she’d swear it by Griddle’s stupid sword that she carries with her for no reason—Gideon _is_ wearing that bracelet. Harrow sees it; she watches it catch the light dully in disappointment, and she sees the shadows it makes on Griddle’s wrist. If she’d thought to examine Griddle’s bones, she’s sure she would have noticed the light pressure it was exerting on them.

When she blinks, though, it’s gone.

Suddenly, Harrow is cold.

“Griddle,” she whispers, eyes fixed to the spot where the obscene bracelet was hanging off of Griddle’s skin (it _was_ , it was embarrassing Harrow and everything), “did you make a bracelet for yourself that says ‘fuckbuds’?”

“No,” Gideon says, cocking her head to the side. Then she smirks and leans down to Harrow’s ear and growls lowly, “But I can make you one if you’d like, oh mistress mine.”

Okay.

All fucking right.

Either she’s seeing things (highly possible), or her brain is just trying to do all it can to embarrass her in front of Griddle (also possible). Maybe her brain thought of the possibility of Dulcinea Septimus and Gideon Nav…partaking in acts unspeakable…and decided, _Hey, let’s imagine the worst possible thing that could arise from this, and let’s put a bracelet on Griddle for a second that says ‘fuckbuds’ on it, wouldn’t that just be great? Wouldn’t that just be the best damn thing? Wouldn’t that just tickle us to bits?_

“Air,” Harrow says, followed by, “Space,” and then she pushes herself out of Gideon’s hands and into the rest of the room. Gideon follows, because she doesn’t understand concepts like _air_ and _space_ , apparently.

“I was only joking, Nonageezy, I promise,” she says, but Harrow is distracted by the memory of a bracelet that doesn’t exist.

“Let me _breathe_ , Griddle,” Harrow rasps, spinning on her heel to come face to torso with Gideon. She looks up into her cavalier’s golden eyes and notices the sudden worry stitched into them. She takes a step back and holds out a hand so Gideon does not follow. “By the Emperor Undying, do not take one step closer to me.”

“Okay,” Gideon says, holding her hands up in surrender. “Okay, whatever you need.”

Harrow wonders if now she can think.

Harrow is interrupted from her wondering by a knock on the door.

Gideon does not move to open it, apparently opting instead to listen to Harrow’s command of _do not take one step closer to me_. Harrow sighs, drops her hand, and goes to the door. When she pulls it open, there’s a lovely older woman standing outside of it, looking like she’s guilty. Of what, Harrow does not know.

“I like the idea,” Abigail Pent says, wasting no time. Her lips are split into a sad smile. “I like having the cavaliers fight without weapons. I felt that was a nice, safe touch to add. You made Gideon much more—oh, how do I say this? _Direct_ than she appeared in real life, though.”

“What,” Harrow says intelligently. She thinks the back of her head is bleeding. She does not check.

Abigail Pent’s ( _who_ is Abigail Pent? Who is she, and why does Harrow know her name?) smile, somehow, gets sadder. “Oh, dear. I’ll get to the point. This isn’t how it happens. None of it is.”

“What,” Harrow says again.

“You’ve gotten yourself so stuck in your head that you’re doing loops now, I’m afraid. You’re starting at Canaan House after everything, and you’re imagining a grave that doesn’t exist, and then you’re imagining a lobotomy that _does_ exist. Then you’re back here, living in one of your fantasies. It’s all very complicated.”

“Explain again, or I will kill you.”

“You won’t, dear. Sorry to say, I’m already dead.”

Harrow falls to the floor and closes her eyes and blacks the fuck out.

When she comes to, she’s staring at a crumbling ceiling. Abigail Pent is kneeling at her left side. Two teenagers are at her head, looking like they’ve been crying.

“Hi,” the cavalier of the teens says. “I’m sorry none of your dreams are real.”

“ _Hey_ ,” the cavalier’s necro hisses. “Could you _not_.”

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and Ninth Fingerbone to the Emperor Undying, brings her knees to her chest and lets her body be taken over by sobs.

**IV. SOME TIME AFTER GIDEON'S REBIRTH**

Harrow lies in a tomb, waiting.


End file.
